Boca search optimization firm makes clients a hit on the web: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

When businesses went looking for executive suite space via the Internet, the Crexent Business Centers often came up high in the search results.

The problem was, the company's locations are in South Florida. Yet if someone in New York, Texas or California were searching for a business center, for example, Crexent often was in the results. The result was worthless to the Davie-based executive suite center.

"Coming up on a national search for `executive suites' doesn't do us very much good," said Camie Dunbar, a marketing consultant with Crexent.

So last year, Crexent hired More Visibility Inc., a Boca Raton Internet search optimization company. More Visibility reviewed Crexent's existing key word search terms. It then tested the words and phrases to see how they performed, seeking to improve the company's search rankings.

Once the new words were embedded on Crexent's Web pages, site visits grew 38 percent over the previous six months, Dunbar said. "Click throughs," or the number of people arriving at the site after seeing Crexent's ad as part of a search result, grew as well.

Web site optimization is growing in importance as more companies shift their marketing dollars from traditional advertising, like television or print, to the Internet, said Andrew Wetzler, president of More Visibility. This year, search engine marketing is forecast to increase by 33 percent and should top $11.6 billion by 2010, according to Forrester Research Inc. Online display advertising will grow 11 percent over the same period, hitting $8 billion in 2010, the firm reports.

Given that four-fifths of all Internet searches begin with a search engine, fine-tuning a Web site can help boost results, Wetzler said. A search engine optimization strategy has several components. Key word refinement means finding the most logical words likely to be used when searching for a specific person, place or thing.A paid search is a link that comes up on the search list. A paid inclusion is when marketers bid to have their ads show on search screens. The higher bidder's ad appears higher on the page, and can be interpreted as the preferred selection.

To make the argument for online vs. traditional advertising, Wetzler highlights direct mail efforts. Printing and mailing a promotional piece is only half the equation, he said. The recipient has to open or read the mailing. A 2 percent response rate is about industry standard, though the marketer pays for every item mailed. Even e-mail marketing has fallen in favor, as recipients are jaded by the flood of "spam," or unsolicited e-mail.

With site optimization and paid placement or inclusion, the marketer often pays only for those who clicked on the link.

"The fundamentals in that equation are gigantic. Search has evolved to the point, for a lot of companies, that it can no longer be ignored," said Wetzler, whose firm works with such clients as National Healing, Robb & Stucky, and R.S. Cycles. "It's not just advertising online. It's about making a site more effective beyond just the online presence."

The initial cost to Crexent was around $6,000, and now the company pays an ongoing fee for each click its Web marketing generates, Dunbar said. For the fee, More Visibility provides the new search words and content, and Crexent implements the optimization changes on its site. More Visibility also worked directly with the search engines in an effort to boost the site's results. Crexent pays for the clicks made on its links up to a preset limit which Crexent determines.

"They helped come up with the ideas and words for our site, and how to make them better," Dunbar said. "This was like strategic planning for our Web site."

Jeff Zbar is a freelance writer. He can be reached at jeff@jeffzbar.com.

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